27th Maine Infantry

Item LTR-9413

Description

Original Civil War soldier's letter. 4 pages, written in period ink.


Camp at Chantilly, VA
June 14th 1862

My Dear Wife,

In accordance with my usual routine, I devote a part of this day to communicate a few of my thoughts to my dear wife. Hoping these few lines will find you as well as they leave me. I received a letter from you by last Friday evening mail saying you were all well for which I felt very glad. There is one man in this Company, Gordon by name, that lost four children about the time we lost ours with the same disease. All died within twenty days. About three weeks ago his wife had twins and he seemed like a new man after he got the news and least his wife was getting along well. But last mail brought the sad intelligence to him that his wife had gone to that Bourne from which no traveler ever returns and the poor man has got all he can to survive. I think I pity him very much. Now he has those two little ones that he never has seen and one little one that is about two years old with no one to take care of them and he out here. It is very bad indeed.

You wanted me to write all I knew about our coming home. I do not know as I can write anything different from what I wrote in my last which was I thought we should be at home by the 30th if nothing happens. I hope we shall anyway, don’t you? You said you had no paper to send me in your last. It does not make any difference if you do not send me anymore. There is paper enough on the ground now. So it will not be any trouble for me to procure stationary any time. And perhaps in one week or so we shall be on a move toward home where we shall not want as much paper as we do now. There is no news here at present that will interest you. I was glad you had some rain there. For if it is as dry there as it is here I fear the husbandman would not realize much in harvest.

I understand that Mr. Sheldon Wells went home drunk the other night and beat his wife and threatened to kill her. And she took the road for it. If this is so he had ought to serve a term of five years at the riff raffs. That old negro woman that I wrote to you about is dead. She died last week some time and the soldiers buried her. I am glad she has got through with her suffering. For I think it would have been impossible for her to have lived there another winter. She would have frozen to death I think. Trace and I went a cherrying this forenoon. There is a many quantity of them here but there are not quite ripe yet. I did not eat many of them. I did not know whether they might hurt me and I do not want to get hurt out here. I forgot to tell you in my last that I have sent you $20. I suppose you have gotten it before this reaches you. If you have, please make mention of it in your next. In closing, I would say that I hope to see my dear wife. From her loving husband,

C. W. Gooch